


Appreciation

by Macx



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-15
Updated: 2011-05-15
Packaged: 2017-10-19 10:40:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/199935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Macx/pseuds/Macx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Borderlines AU. You should read Foreign Territory first or you won't understand a thing.</p><p>Rodney appreciates a lot about Sheppard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Appreciation

He was watching.

He liked watching.

Maybe it made him a voyeur, but he couldn't help it. Well, most of the times he couldn't help it. It was like an obsession.

He did it covertly – and not so covertly. Being mind-linked to the man you were watching had its disadvantages. But most of the time he was rather good at the undercover watching thing.

He had preferences, too. Like nudity. Nudity was… very nice. Then there was ‘dressed-in-tight-black-shirts’. Mouth-watering, too. He had seen his lover naked many times. In bed, for example. Or when John Sheppard changed.

From human to Kiowata.

There was never a clear image how the transformation took place, but he got naked before that. Clothes would end up ripped if he didn't. And then Dr. Rodney McKay was treated to the unclothed, lithe form of his lover, and seconds later to the powerful, blackish brown equine called a Kiowata.

John was strength and power incarnate in that form. The black mane on a sinewy neck, the two long horns over his eyes, the sheer size of the alien creature compared to a horse on Earth. And its grace. Despite this size there was sheer grace to each move.

Rodney had been afraid when he had first seen this alien being, when he hadn't even known it was John Sheppard, but now the fear was long gone. There was respect, of course. And love.

Riding lessons had brought him even closer to John in that form. Painfully, though. For the first weeks he had hurt in places he hadn't known someone could truly hurt. He suffered through it with his usual snarkiness, but he was getting better at riding. Especially when it came to faster strides. By now John could easily trot or canter with Rodney on his back, without McKay falling off. Gallops were terrifying, though. They didn't use a saddle – couldn't, actually, since none existed – and it was only sensible to do it this way. Should John ever have to change off-world for some reason or other, Rodney hardly had a saddle handy. Instead he rode bare-back – painful, yes – and used a belt as a kind of collar around John's neck to hold on.

He liked to watch John on his own, though. The Kiowata running proud and free. He liked to feel that strength in every movement. He liked to open up his mind when John ran and enjoyed himself. It was total freedom. Like… flying.

Years ago – heck, months ago! – Rodney would have laughed or scorned anyone who would have told him that he might enjoy this. That he would sit in the middle of nowhere, his laptop or PC tablet with him, watching a two-horned horse running and frolicking. He would have scowled at the very idea of a relationship – especially with the Babe Magnet and Panty Peeler, Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard.

And then M7B-377 had happened.

Everything had changed after that. All the fights, all the bickering, all the ups and downs had come to one very intimate connection of two apparently so very different men.

Rodney smiled to himself, trying to hide it behind his laptop screen.

His sister would probably have a coronary or at least a moment of total bewilderment if he ever told her about falling in love so totally and completely. So badly. So hard. And so… intensely. It had come over him like a tidal wave and it refused to let him go.

Sheppard fed that obsession he had with his lover. Well, he wasn't obsessive like a fanatic follower. It was more like… he couldn't think of changing anything between them. Rodney couldn't imagine someone else at his side. He couldn't think of a time he wouldn't love this man, despite all their arguments and heated discussions and different views on a subject matter – pick one, any one.

They would bicker, he would bitch, John would snap back, they would work out their differences. And they would also work harmoniously together, like so many times before. They understood each other, had already without the bond. Rodney always thought back to their countless missions, their off-time, playing chess together, him discovering Sheppard's MENSA test, his hidden intelligence, the image of the flyboy covering up a sharp mind that loved a mathematical challenge. Sheppard was a lot more than a mindless grunt or a gun-swinging superman, heroically leaping through the Gate.

Rodney's eyes strayed to the man in question and he bit his lower lip at the sight.

No, he wasn't what he wanted to appear to be. Not at all. He was so much more and a lot of those shades Rodney had discovered almost by accident.

John was sleeping at the moment. He had come back from a day of test flying the Puddlejumpers, figuring out what was wrong with two of them together with Zelenka. It had been almost fifteen hours of slaving over circuitry and trying out different maneuvers, one of them almost making them crash into the ocean. In the end the error had been found and Zelenka had happily added the nightshift to his already crammed schedule of Jumper maintenance.

Sheppard had simply crashed in Rodney's quarters without much ado. He had come in, taken a shower, fallen onto the mattress, and he had been asleep within minutes.

Rodney could feel the sleeping mind along the connection and he was wary not to disturb the exhausted man. He was working with his usual noise, something his lover was used to, but he kept his shields up.

John moved lazily. Rodney's eyes were on the prone man again. Sheppard was lying on his side, on top of the blanket, muscular legs showing, up to a nicely shaped butt that was outlined against the black material of the shorts. The equally black t-shirt did nothing to hide the lithe physique and Rodney tore his gaze away.

This man loved him.

Sheppard. Lieutenant Colonel, US Air Force.

Babe magnet extraordinaire.

Rodney had always been jealous. Either of the way women flocked toward him or how the man could get them to do so with a lazy smile or two. Rodney knew he had the tact of a two-by-four when it came to flirting, but that was only because his main passion had always been science. He lived for this.

Until M7B-377. It had changed their lives, had shown him the depths of his own soul and that of another being.

Sheppard could be sex on legs, he could be death, he could be so warm and fun, and he could be vulnerable. Rodney secretly admired how the man looked in the outfits he wore, how he so unselfconsciously wore what McKay himself could never dream of. He liked the black leather jacket, had drooled over the military issue pants and the one-size-too-small t-shirts John seemed to have bought in bulk. Rodney could spend hours watching Sheppard stick-fighting or instructing Marines in close-combat.

Grace. Sex and grace. And the darkness inside him, the deadliness, the cold-blooded killer he could be.

Rodney had experienced it all to a degree, and he accepted it in this man.

Something trickled along the bond and John rolled onto his back, one arm flung out over the empty spot beside him. Rodney watched and studied the sleeping features.

Maybe women were jealous of what he had and they didn't. It hadn't been fun and games, though. There had been a lot of pain and a lot of angst and fear and the agony of possibly losing John. Not because he wouldn't be able to handle the emotional backlash of getting dumped. It was so much more. The bond was between their minds and souls, as tacky as it sounded, and losing John would kill him. Literally. It would open up a black hole of despair that nothing, not even the best psychotherapy in two galaxies, could cure.

This was it. For life. For both of them. And John hadn't so much as seriously flirted with another person, alien or human, male or female. He might tease, especially Rodney, but he wouldn't stray.

Exclusive. That's what Ezra Standish had told him. Kiowata mated for life. He was that mate. Another tacky description.

But true.

Rodney saved the work he had been trying to do and closed the laptop. It was late – or early, depending on your point of view – and he would need at least a few hours of sleep. He stripped in the bathroom, brushed his teeth, slipped into his sleep wear, and silently padded over to the huge bed. He tried to be careful, but the mattress dipping had John blink his eyes open.

Rodney admired how there was never a moment of confusion, how those hazel depths fixed on his with a brief intensity that seemed to scan him right down to his soul, then John grunted sleepily and snuggled close. Maybe it was the military training. Rodney didn't know. It was simply very reassuring in a dangerously dark sort of way.

Rodney let his lover spoon up behind him, an arm over his waist, and he enjoyed the physical closeness that was echoed by warm pulses through the mind-link.

No words were exchanged.

None were needed, with the bond between them humming softly.


End file.
